This Weird New Hair-Color Technique Involves a Sheet of Glass

There's a crazy-cool new hair-color technique making the rounds, and it's mesmerizing to watch. Instead of using foils or simple hand-painting to distribute the color, this technique relies on a sheet of glass. Yes, glass. And it may have been divinely inspired: The idea for "hand-pressed color," as Chiala Marvici, the New York City–based colorist who came up with it, calls it, came to her overnight. "I know it sounds strange, but I had a dream where I saw multiple layers of patterns and sheets of color, one in front of the other," she says. The goal? Multidimensional color that's so shiny, it appears to shimmer.

"The technique allows the colorist to create multiple layers and patterns to create a multidimensional feel," says Marvici says. Here's how it works: She paints squiggles and blobs of different hair-color shades onto one custom-cut six-inch sheet of clear plexiglass.

Here's a video of what that looks like (strangely hypnotizing, right?):

Next, Marvici lays a section of hair flat over the color-covered glass. Then comes the "hand-pressed" part: She takes a plastic putty knife and swipes it along the surface, smooshing the color into the hair and blurring the colors together. This type of application takes about 20 minutes, and Marvici allows the color to process for another 30.

The result is a blurred, blended, multidimensional color that's almost holographic:

And you might see hand-pressed color popping up at your local salon sometime soon. Marvici has been traveling the country in order to teach other colorists how to do it, but she thinks it'll take a few months for it to really catch on. In the meantime, we'll be watching her Instagram videos on repeat.